Steve Jobs: Ample Values from his Life

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California. His biological parents were Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali. Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs.

Steven Jobs was smart but directionless, dropping out of college and experimenting with different pursuits. Apple started with three men—Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Mike Markkula—who together in 1976 designed and marketed the Apple II series of computers. It was the first commercially successful line of personal computers, and led to the Apple Lisa in 1983—the first computer to use a mouse-driven GUI (graphical user interface). Steve was fired from Apple in 1985 and started a company NeXT and also incorporated Pixar – an animation movie making company.

NeXT built their machine with their own operating system NeXTSTEP which is simple to use as Macintosh. Since the machine was too expensive, progress was not expected as such. Sales of Pixar hardware were also microscopic, and the company went software-only in 1990 by developing the RenderMan 3D rendering software.

His both companies were not doing good at that time.

Apple was also struggling with their business after Job’s departure. Microsoft launched Windows 95 in the year 1995 and it was a huge success and the sales of Macintosh computers started plummeting.

In 1996 Apple decided that instead of writing a new, modern operating system from scratch to compete with Window, it was better for Apple to acquire one. They chose to buy NeXTSTEP, NeXT’s operating system — and Steve Jobs convinced him to buy the whole company, for a whopping $400 million in December 1996.

He became CEO of Apple Computers the company he founded and also he remained CEO of PIXAR too.

Then Steve introduced iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and made Apple a world-class brand. Rest is History

In late 2003, he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer of a rare kind. After a long battle with pancreatic cancer, he died peacefully at home on October 5, 2011, surrounded by his family — the day following the introduction of the iPhone 4S, an Apple event that he watched from his deathbed.

3 Ample Values from Steve Jobs Life Story

1. The first story is about connecting the dots. Jobs had to drop out of Reed College and he decided to take a calligraphy class. Ten years later, when they were designing the first Macintosh computer, they designed it all calligraphic techniques into the Mac. Since then Windows copied the Mac with its typography format. If he hadn’t dropped out of college, he would never drop in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that these dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and Simplicity- Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life.”

2. His second story is about love and loss. He got fired from his own company Apple. During the next five years, he started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman Laurene who would become his wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. Apple bought NeXT, He returned to Apple, and the technology they developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and he had a wonderful family together. Jobs believed “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. You’ve got to find what you love. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

3. His third story is about death. He was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type that is incurable. No one wants to die. And yet death is the destination we all share. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. In his speech he mentioned “When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. On the back cover of their final issue were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish“. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”